Farmers queued up for selling wheat in a Madhya Pradesh mandi
--web photo
* * Nearly 144 farmers from Araria district in Bihar have been waiting to receive the compensation promised under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna (PMFBY) for the paddy crop loss they suffered in 2017.
* Onion farmers in Mandsaur in Madhya Pradesh are suffering silently for the low prices they are getting this year. Even at a low of 50 paise a Kg there are not enough buyers. Most farmers have dumped their produce in the fields.
* In Punjab, farmer widows are waiting endlessly for the promised compensation of Rs 2 lakh each. Elsewhere in the country, farm widows have been running from pillar to post seeking the relief they are entitled to.
* At Itarsi in Madhya Pradesh an irate farmer calls up the Deputy Commissioner to complain about the faulty weighing of his crop produce at the local APMC mandi. He is arrested, probably because the DC is annoyed at a farmer calling him directly.
There is no end to such glaring lapses or bureaucratic hurdles that farmers encounter almost every other day. From the governance perspective, these may seem insignificant to those who live on assured monthly income that is credited to their bank accounts unfailingly on the first of every month. The suffering that daily wage workers have to undergo has only to be realised when studies show only 32 per cent of labour charges that were due to them upon completion of the works have been paid to them on time in the first two quarters of 2017-18 . Take the case of sugarcane farmers, who expect payment only once in a year when the crop is brought to the sugar mills. Even then, till mid-February this year, more than Rs 23,800-crore of the cane payments remains outstanding. On an average, a sugarcane farmer has to wait for at least two years before being paid.
The hardship that farmers and farm workers experience at every step is simply baffling. It is difficult to even visualise the trauma and human suffering a farm family has to undergo after being denied the rightful price of the produce forcing the farmer to throw tomato, potato, onion and other vegetables on to the street. What happens to the farming family whose standing bumper crop is destroyed by cattle and wild animals. To see the standing crop being damaged by strong winds or untimely rains is nothing short of a hammer blow from nowhere. I have seen people in the cities being casually dismissive about such reports saying this happens now and then in agriculture. But if their own salaries get delayed by a month or two, they resort to loud protests and the dharnas.
In fact, much of the agrarian distress that is prevalent across the country is an outcome of a massive governance failure by way of denial of physical, social, natural and human capital that is essential to create a conducive environment for agriculture. When Rajiv Gandhi said that only 15 paise out a rupee reaches the rural beneficiaries, he was only referring to the huge loss of economic resources that are pocketed by the bureaucratic chain on the way. In addition, there are innumerable hurdles and obstacles that farmers and farm workers confront at the time of production, harvesting and marketing of the crop that makes farming a losing and an unattractive enterprise. Even loan disbursement and recovery comes laced with a number of problems that farmers face. According to the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) almost 80% of farm suicide cases were related to bank recoveries.
That makes me wonder why we can’t come up with a sustainable index on ease of doing farming. Sound and efficient regulations are not only critical for business enterprises but are absolutely essential for a thriving farming sector, ending extreme poverty and hunger and at the same time meeting the targets of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After all, in a country where 600 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture, a set of reforms will not only help remove the bottlenecks but also create a favourable environment for attracting public and private sector investment and wooing entrepreneurship in farming. On the lines of the World Bank Group’s Doing Business Index, which was launched in 2003, a similar kind of ease of doing farming index can be prepared that will usher in prosperity where it is needed most, and at the same time propel millions of farm livelihoods into a profitable and attractive enterprise.
At present India is ranked 77 among 190 countries, in the ease of doing business index. Just because the World Bank has been pushing it, a number of institutes and universities all across have been coming up with their own index that have helped fine tune the index to enable business competitiveness. On the other hand, while much of the talk for doubling farm income is bogged down in productivity details, initiating an ease of doing platform, followed by a time bound action plan, will lay out a strong foundation for revitalising agriculture. More so as a time when the country is moving from jobless to job-loss growth, reviving agriculture is the only way forward. I am not seeking an ease of doing index only for agribusiness enterprise but for farming as a whole. National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) could be the promoter and numerous agricultural universities/institutes; NGOs, farmer organisations as well as mass movements could be roped in to help develop the index.
Roughly about 7,000 big, small, medium and nano steps have been taken on ease of doing business, the then commerce and industry minister Nirmala Sitaraman had informed in 2017. Earlier, soon after the NDA government was sworn in, the CII had presented in August 2014 a list of 60-points regarding green clearance norms. In six months time, the government came back with an action plan for 29 of the listed points. The urgency with which the government has moved on making it easy for business to operate is what is required for reforming agriculture and moving it out of the economic mindset that fails to treat farming as an economic activity. Agriculture alone has the potential to reboot the economy, and an ease of doing farming index will unleash the immense potential it carries.
Ease of Farming Index. The Tribune. May 15, 2019
https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/ease-of-farming-index/773003.html
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